GEOGRAPHIC VISUALIZATIONS OF THE E-LEARNING USAGE IN ROMANIA
GEOGRAPHIC VISUALIZATIONS OF THE E-LEARNING USAGE IN ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: We used data gathered on the Integrated Educational Registry (Registrul Educational Integrat - rei.gov.ro), which contains information about students enrolled in the national public and private university programs. The information is aggregated and anonymized to ensure students privacy. The student data is correlated with information about the e-learning courses offered by the universities. The research analyses the availability of two types of e-learning resources: online materials for attendance required courses and stand-alone online courses available to university students. To study the spread of persons that have access to national e-learning materials, the data is plotted using geographic visualizations. The study uses three types of visualizations: heatmaps, comparative heatmaps and choropleth maps. Heatmaps are used to observe areas of high e-learning usage, showing only the locations of students that are enrolled in universities that offer both e-learning courses and attendance required courses. Comparative heatmaps are a new type of geographic visualization that consists of multiple layers of different colored semi-transparent heatmaps. Since the heatmaps are semi-transparent, the areas where they overlap will have the combined color of both. For example, overlapping areas between a yellow heatmap and a blue one will be coloured green. In our study, comparative heatmaps are used to observe the locations of students that can access e-learning courses compared to students that can't, in an attempt to find the differences and intersections between the two distinct datasets. Choropleth maps are used to visualize student locations aggregated by territorial and administrative divisions (counties, cities and towns). The resulting maps will be accessible via an online web platform on the Integrated Educational Registry website.

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